Jon Fosse
Facts
Jon Fosse
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2023
Born: 29 September 1959, Haugesund, Norway
Residence at the time of the award: Norway; Austria
Prize motivation: “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable”
Language: Norwegian Nynorsk
Prize share: 1/1
Work
Jon Fosse's immense œuvre written in Nynorsk consists of a wealth of plays, novels, poetry collections, essays, children’s books and translations. In his radical reduction of language and dramatic action, he expresses the most powerful human emotions of anxiety and powerlessness in the simplest everyday terms. It is through this ability to evoke man’s loss of orientation, that he is a major innovator in contemporary theatre. Despite Fosse's negative outlook, there is great warmth and humour in his work, and a naïve vulnerability to his stark images of human experience.
Book tips
Watch the 2024 Nobel Prize announcements
Watch the live stream of the announcements.